Lot Essay
'Als ob die optische Welt die wirkliche waer!'- 'As if the visible world were the real one!' (Fritz Winter quoted in: Fritz Winter, "Tagebuchaufzeichnungen", quoted after Carla Schulz-Hoffmann, 'Fritz Winter und die abstrakte Malerei in Deutschland', in: exh. cat. Fritz Winter, hrsg. v. Johann Karl Schmidt, Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1990, S. 11-17, p. 11.
Fritz Winter's skepticism towards a visual reality went along with the development of abstract painting in his oeuvre since the very beginning. The relativity of the visual world's validity can be seen as a guiding theme of Fritz Winter's complete works.
The burden of his life influenced his artistic works: as a miner he worked underground, later, although the National Socialists declared his art "degenerate" and banned him from exhibiting his works, he was drafted and sent to the eastern front so that he was forced to experience the entire drama of the Second World War at first hand until May 1945, when he was captured by the Russians and detained in a prisoner-of-war camp until May 1949.
Immediately after his return Fritz Winter was co-founder of the group "Zen 49" and soon joined the European avant-garde movement. Elaborating his works of the 1930s, which were made under the influence of the Bauhaus, Winter developed his own pictorial language, which set him apart from the Informal Art.
The present lot, Felder, brilliantly conveys Winter's exploration between form and colour. He seeks to express something of the human condition through the surprisingly complex relationships that can exist between very simple forms and colours. The vibrant red and deep blues here, highlighted by flashes of orange and green, radiate beyond the canvas with an imposing presence. In short, Felder is an expressive and emotional work that captures Winter's quest for the metaphorical, the philosophical and the sublime through his painterly voice.
Fritz Winter's skepticism towards a visual reality went along with the development of abstract painting in his oeuvre since the very beginning. The relativity of the visual world's validity can be seen as a guiding theme of Fritz Winter's complete works.
The burden of his life influenced his artistic works: as a miner he worked underground, later, although the National Socialists declared his art "degenerate" and banned him from exhibiting his works, he was drafted and sent to the eastern front so that he was forced to experience the entire drama of the Second World War at first hand until May 1945, when he was captured by the Russians and detained in a prisoner-of-war camp until May 1949.
Immediately after his return Fritz Winter was co-founder of the group "Zen 49" and soon joined the European avant-garde movement. Elaborating his works of the 1930s, which were made under the influence of the Bauhaus, Winter developed his own pictorial language, which set him apart from the Informal Art.
The present lot, Felder, brilliantly conveys Winter's exploration between form and colour. He seeks to express something of the human condition through the surprisingly complex relationships that can exist between very simple forms and colours. The vibrant red and deep blues here, highlighted by flashes of orange and green, radiate beyond the canvas with an imposing presence. In short, Felder is an expressive and emotional work that captures Winter's quest for the metaphorical, the philosophical and the sublime through his painterly voice.